reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (07/28/85)
Up to this point, Larry McMurtry has mostly written about contemporary
Texas life, sometimes going thirty or forty years back, but basically
dealing with modern problems of life. (His best known works, thanks to
films, are "The Last Picture Show" and "Terms of Endearment".) However,
the Texas of today is firmly based on the Texas of the late 19th century,
the classic Old West, and McMurtry has gone back to that period for his
latest novel, "Lonesome Dove". The results are splendid.
Lonesome Dove is a tiny town on the Mexican border, and the time is
the 1880s. Augustus McCrae and W.F. Call are retired Texas Rangers
who are conducting a leisurely cattle and horse operation based largely
on stock stolen from Mexican ranches south of the border. (The rational
being that the Mexicans stole much of their stock from Texans, anyway.)
Gus is rather fond of his sedentary life, lazing around drinking whiskey
and occasionally visting Lorena, the local whore. Call, whose life is
based on duty, works hard, but to little purpose. Jake Spoon, and old
Ranger comrade, rides into town and fires Call up with notions of driving
a herd of cattle to Montana, with the intention of being the first ranchers
in the territory. Call's energy sweeps Gus and many others along into an
epic journey across the length of the country. And I mean epic, 840 odd
pages of it.
McMurtry provides a huge cast of characters, including the various cowhands
Gus and Call hire, a sheriff on the trail of Jake Spoon, the sheriff's
runaway wife, a woman in Nebraska who Gus always loved, and a darkly
villainous renegade Indian named Blue Duck. The characters are the main
draw of "Lonesome Dove". Each of them is precisely drawn, with their
own strengths and weaknesses. McMurtry doesn't rely on stereotypes, and
he is remarkably faithful to his characters. No one performs an action out
of character for the sake of the plot (which, unfortunately, hurts a little
at the very end).
McMurtry's writing style is another asset. McMurtry is consistently
entertaining, and also thought provoking. The dialog is very strong,
especially, and there is quite a lot of it, particularly because Gus is
a marathon talker. McMurtry also constructs things quite well, braiding
together several different narrative threads into a single story. Only at
the very end do the threads unravel, as McMurtry seems unable to find a
strong way to wind the story up. "Lonesome Dove" is also a novel about
something. Many characters are faced, at one point or another, with a
choice between a hard, possibly dull, usually prosaic road and a flashier,
more seductive course. Those who choose the hard route may not exactly prosper,
but they invariably wind up happier than those who let habit or inertia or
timidity drift them out of the realities of everyday life in favor of a
fantasy.
Not to make "Lonesome Dove" sound too deep or philosophical. If nothing
else, it's a splendid read, likely to have you reading later at night than
you should. The many exciting twists of the plot, the interesting characters,
and the rewarding prose make "Lonesome Dove" a delight to read.
As a warning to those who dislike violence in their literature, "Lonesome
Dove" contains its share, based on the savage and dangerous conditions of
the Old West. When violence comes, it's generally swift and deadly.
McMurtry doesn't shrink from showing us violence or its effects, sometimes
to the point of gruesomeness. But the violence has an authentic feel,
and is certainly not gratuitous. Unless you are completely adverse to
violence in literature, you shouldn't let it keep you from reading
"Lonesome Dove".
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher